Page:The religious life of King Henry VI.djvu/98

72 the holy King again for his intercession before the throne of God. A passing reference to the pilgrimages and the devotion to the saintly King which continued long after the forcible destruction of his shrine at Windsor is to be found in pages of Foxe the Martyrologist."

In 1543 this writer gives an account of the "Trouble and Persecution of Four Wyndsormen," one Robert Textwood, we are told "as he beheld the pilgrims of Devonshire and Cornwall, how they came in by plums, with candles and images of wax in their hands, to offer to good King Henry of Wyndsor, as they called him, could not refrain to see such great idolatrie committed, and how vainly the people had spent their goods in coming so far to kiss a spur and have an old hat set upon their heads."

Like other sixteenth-century historians, Speed borrows much of his account of the reign of Henry VI from the narrative of Blackman. After giving a relation of the King's death and burial, Speed adds an appreciation of the character of the monarch. He writes: "Thus lived and thus died this